


Afraid

by Biweatherman



Category: Groundhog Day - Minchin/Rubin
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide, i guess?, it really isn't as dark as this is making it seem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:48:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biweatherman/pseuds/Biweatherman
Summary: Five times Phil Connors hid that he was terrified and one time he didn't have to.





	Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> That's right, it's a five times fic. Warning for suicide mention, drug mention and implied underage drinking.

If Phil had to pinpoint one emotion that had been a constant in his life he would choose fear. As long as he could remember he’d always been afraid of something.

 

When he was six or seven it had been the dark, the black unknown and the possibility of what could be lurking there. Running into his parents bedroom and sleeping there had been routine until Mary had teased him about it and he’d learnt to cope in other ways. The habits of keeping the bathroom light on and triple checking the closets and under the bed had stayed with him throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. Even after he’d taken those measures he’d been scared, terrified, but he’d learned not to show it. When he woke up from nightmares and the darkness of his room seemed suffocating he muffled his sobs with a pillow, got his breathing under control and tried to go back to sleep. 

 

When he was ten or eleven it had been drowning. It was an irrational fear, he knew it was; his sister had been taking him to the pool during summer break since they were five, he knew how to swim. But one day he’d gotten water up his nose and down his throat and panicked and thought for sure that that would be the end and from then on he couldn’t bear the thought of being in the pool without touching the ground. But school made the entire year take lessons in sixth grade and the other boys had bugged him over why he refused to join in when they splashed water or pulled at each other's ankles dragging them down beneath the surface and it was just easier to ignore the part of his mind screaming at him to get out and onto dry land and play along instead. At least then he was in control of his fear, a part of him knew that if something bad did happen he could control his body and reach the side of a pool but he couldn’t control the jeers of the other students. It was easier to hide his fear, better.

 

When he was sixteen his fear was both more abstract but also much more real. After a tumultuous relationship his parents finally split, his dad walking out one fateful february afternoon. Phil had always been a handful but as his parents had started arguing more and more he’d found the only way to escape the shouts was to climb out the window and out of the house, no matter how late it was. He spent evenings hanging out with older students, loitering where they shouldn’t and drinking. When the door finally slammed shut on the retreating form of his father he was terrified he had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. This time he didn’t share the fear not because he was worried people would laugh but instead that they would agree, that his fear would be confirmed and that he would have to face the truth he was the reason his ‘happy family’ was no more.

 

When he was twenty he started to fear he’d never be happy. He was doing well in college and had gained a summer internship at a tv station that promised a job at the end of his degree, he should have been ecstatic. But as he laid awake in his room, cursing the fact his roommate could only sleep in complete darkness, he pictured his future and in it he was alone. He would leave the job he was meant to love and would return to a large apartment in a nice part of the city. But, there would be no one to greet him at the door with tenderness and a kiss. He buried his fears with work and alcohol, and drugs when his loneliness felt so bad it took form in an ache in his gut he couldn’t shake, and so many girls he could almost forget he was alone. He continued these coping methods for so long and did them so well that he started to convince even himself that his life wasn’t tinged with fear, that he didn’t spend every day in suffocating loneliness, that he was okay, that he was happy.

 

When he was forty, or one hundred and forty depending on how you looked at it, he finally faced one of his fears. Dying had always been a fear of his, not one of the main ones, but definitely one which helped create the others. Fear of the end made him terrified of the monsters in the night, of a watery grave, of having no one in his family and no family of his own to mourn him. But here he was, with a gun in his hand, pointed at his temple, and time slowed down even as people screamed and ran around him. There was silence except for the sound of his breathing and the pounding of his heart and while he was afraid he had more than enough practise at pretending not to care that his hand didn’t shake one bit as he squeezed the trigger.

 

Phil Connors was terrified. He was scared of getting stuck in the loop again, he was haunted by the what-ifs of a timeline where the loop never happened and he continued to be a jerk. But it wasn’t until the sound of another apartment door slamming shut led to him curled up on the floor that he finally admitted for the first time since he was four that he was terrified to someone else.

Rita was stuck in a producers meeting so he’d volunteered to go home and cook dinner. As he’d turned the key in the lock someone else in the hallway slammed shut the door of their appartment with a deafening bang and suddenly he wasn’t in the apartment building but was back in Gobbler's knob, cold metal in his hand and pressed against his temple.

 With trembling hands he’d pushed open the door and collapsed to the floor, sitting there for God knows how long trapped in the past. Rita had found him lying there, and had tentatively placed her hands on his shoulders and slowly counted breaths with him. She hadn’t forced him to tell her what had happened, and instead had gently suggested he see a therapist to talk about his experiences in the loop. She’d wiped away his tears and two weeks later had accompanied him to the therapist's office for the appointment she had helped book.

 Phil Connors was scared of a lot of things, but as Rita silently wrapped her arms around his waist and allowed him to curl into her as he calmed down from another nightmare he realised that for the first time in a long time that he didn’t have to pretend to be okay when he wasn’t and that instead he’d have someone there to help him actually be okay and that made it just that little bit better.


End file.
